PROGRAM

• MOZART Piano Concerto #13 in C Major, K.415/387b (1782-83)
• RAVEL String Quartet in F (1903)
• CHAUSSON Concerto In D Major for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, Op.21 (1891)

Pre-Concert Talk:  Roger Emanuels (at 6:15PM)

MUSIC

Mozart wrote his K.415 piano concerto to delight also as ‘chamber concerto’ with string quartet. Ravel’s Quartet incorporates impressionism, neo-classical clarity, and Far Eastern exoticism. Chausson’s urgent and tender music pays brilliant homage to César Franck.

ARTISTS

The “superb” [N.Y. Times] Calder Quartet was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant for 2014! World-touring New York pianist Anne-Marie McDermott reprises her rousing 2012 Bay Area performance of Mozart and Chausson. N.Y. Times hails violinist Geoff Nuttall as “intensely dynamic” with “stunning technique”. Richard Scheinin praised the “evocative” performances on McDermott’s and Calder’s 2013 Mozart concerto CD. – S.J. Mercury News.

calderquartet.com • annemariemcdermott.net • Goeff Nuttall

PROGRAM

• HAYDN Quartet No. 54 in B-flat Major, Op.71 No. 1, [Count] “Apponyi,” (1793)
• SMETANA Quartet No.1 in E Minor, “From My Life”, (1876)
• SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op.44 (1842)

Pre-Concert Talk:  Roger Emanuels  (at 7:15PM)

MUSIC

Haydn’s post-London Op.71 Quartets - perhaps the first such written for public concert halls, instead of aristocrats - are catchier, more intensified, grander in style. Smetana’s Quartet No.1 “paints a tone picture of my life” - love of art, and dancing and first love - and uses Bohemian folk elements in the music. Schumann wrote, the first-ever quintet for piano and string quartet for his wife Clara. The piece inspired Brahms to write his own piano quintet.

ARTISTS

The Prazak Quartet’s 2011 debut here, with Gwendolyn Mok, was a hit! The “superb foursome” [Chicago Tribune] from Prague has toured worldwide for over 30 years. Gwendolyn Mok, Bay Area soloist and Head of Keyboard Studies at San Jose State Univ., has performed and recorded world-wide with major orchestras in London, Hong Kong and Beijing.

prazakquartet.com • youtube-PrazakQuartet • gwendolynmok.com

CYCLE

Year 3 concludes the Beethoven quartet cycle. His ‘first period’ quartets, Op.18, of 1798-1800, already demonstrate his mastery of the Classical style. The middle period “Heroic” quartets, 1806-1809, reveal his revolutionary enlarged conception. In the late quartets of 1824-26, Beethoven, now totally deaf, explored new worlds of sound. 

PROGRAM (Cycle Concert 5 - Feb 21)

All-BEETHOVEN:

• No.5 in A Major, Op.18/5 (1801)
• No.13 in B-flat Major, Op.130 (1827)
• Grosse Fuge [Grand Fugue] in B-flat, Op.133
  (1827)

Pre-Concert Talk:  Dr. Bill Meredith, Director, Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoben Studies, SJSU.

MUSIC

Beethoven’s Op. 18/5 in A-Major shows Beethoven's admiration for Mozart’s string quartets. Op. 130’s radical six movements in five different keys reflect Beethoven’s life-long experimenting with how to shape the flow of a work’s forms and moods. The intense, driving Grosse Fuge Op. 133 is about variation and thematic changes, as well as fugue. It was written as the original finale to Op. 130, but was later replaced by a movement much different in character. Which ending do you prefer?

 

PROGRAM (Cycle Concert 6 - Feb 22)

All-BEETHOVEN:

• No.4 in C Minor, Op.18/4 (1801)
  
• No.16 in F Major, Op.135 (1827)
• No.7 in F Major, Op.59/1 [dedicated to Count
  Razumovsky] (1808)

Pre-Concert Talk:  Dr. Bill Meredith, Director, Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoben Studies, SJSU.

MUSIC

Op.18/4 opens with Beethovian C-Minor dramatic tension, but the rondo finale has a Haydnesque gypsy bounce. The ‘symphonic’ Op.59/1 shares the Op.55 Eroica Symphony’s expansive length - and the composer’s expressing his soul in music. Op.135 - in contrast to other ‘late’ quartets - is shorter, lighter in tone, and normal in design - but its Lento assai movement is sublime “interior music.”

ARTISTS

The Auryn has performed this cycle throughout Europe and the U.S. Their Beethoven recordings won the Classical Internet Award, and Gramaphone said: “For me, this is now the set to beat.”

Their Haydn CDs won a German Music Critics’ Prize and an Echo Klassik Prize.

“European tradition that blends elegance of sound with seamless phrasing and clarity of detail.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer

AurynQuartet.com • sjsu.edu/beethoven

PROGRAM

• STRAVINSKY [w Gregor Piatigorsky] Suite italienne for cello & piano (1933)
• BRAHMS Sonata in D Major [transcription of Violin Sonata #1 in G Major,
  Op.78, (1879)
• FRANCK Violin Sonata in A Major [transposed for cello by cellist
  Jules Delsart, same key], (1886)
• Other pieces will be announced at the concert.
  

Pre-Concert Talk:  Roger Emanuels (at 6:15PM)

MUSIC

While re-scoring and modernizing baroque music for Diaghilev’s ballet Pulcinella (1920), Stravinsky discovered in music of the past a gateway commencing his neo-classical second phase. Brahms’  sonatas set the standard for ingeniously combining two instruments. Franck’s Violin Sonata, a wedding gift for violinist and composer Ysaÿe, is chromatic, cyclic, soaring, exalted, and much-loved.

ARTISTS

Zuill Bailey, sought-after for his compelling artistry, technical finesse, and engaging personality, is Prof. of Cello at U. Texas, El Paso, and plays the 1693 Matteo Goffriller cello Mischa Schneider used for 30 years. Naumberg winner and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient Awadagin Pratt, acclaimed for his musical insight and for intensely involving performances, also conducts - and is Prof. of Piano at Univ. of Cincinnati.

awadagin.com  • zuillbailey.com